Dali House

Dali concluded 1948 by reconciling with his father and sister (Ana Maria Dali would soon publish her book about him; Salvador Dali Cusi, pictured below with his son, died in 1950), writing and illustrating “50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship”, a pastiche of a Renaissance artist’s manual, and designing the sets and costumes for a Rome production of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”.

And in 1949, while still in Rome, he met Pope Pius XII. Dali had decided to abandon his atheist cynicism in favour of Catholicism. The pontiff accepted his sincerity and blessed the painting that Dali had brought for him, the first of two versions he would do of “Madonna of Port Lligat” (detail above, click for the complete image).

In a lecture the following year, Dali tried to explain “Why I was Sacrilegious”, and in 1950 published an article on “The Decadence of Modern Art”. To Ian Gibson, author of a nasty biography of the artist, it was “the most outrageous self-publicity campaign of his life”.

If it was a scam, Dali kept it up for a long time. A decade later he was back in the papal chambers, this time to meet Pope John XXIII.

Life magazine was based in a building at 19 West 31st Street in Man- hattan before its move to Rockefeller Plaza, and among its fabled photographers was Philippe Halsman (1906-79), who had a 30-year collaboration with Dali. The most famous image that emerged from their friendship was 1948’s “Dali Atomicus”, seen above, which was given a two-page spread in the magazine.

Halsman and Dali took their cue from Harold Edgerton’s “Coronet” photo of a milk droplet frozen in time and wondered if they might get away with blowing up a chicken for a split-second exposure. They settled on tossing three cats around instead. Halsman suspended an easel, stool and two paintings by Dali (one being his new “Leda Atomica”) from the ceiling while his wife held up a chair. On the count of three, assistants threw the cats and a bucket of water into the air, and on the count of four Dali jumped and Halsman snapped the picture. Six hours and 28 attempts later, Halsman was satisfied. “My assistants and I were wet, dirty and near complete exhaustion,” he wrote. “Only the cats still looked like new.”

The following year Dali was back in Halsman’s studio kicking his legs for “Pop-corn Nude”, below left, a maelstrom of flying components, including piles of popcorn and baked goods and a naked woman, and in 1951 he posed in top hat contemplating an image he himself had devised: a skull assembled from seven nude women.

Halsman, the Latvia-born lensman who was chased from his Paris studio by the Nazis and was granted an emergency US visa thanks to Albert Einstein, shot 101 covers for Life — more than anyone else — and produced iconic images of Einstein, Groucho Marx, JFK, Audrey Hepburn and Winston Churchill. He is best remembered for persuading his famous subjects to jump in the air for “one last shot”. Among those who went along with the fun were Marilyn Monroe, then-vice president Richard Nixon and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

The terrific “outtakes” below from the Halsman-Dali shoot were published in the autumn 1950 issue of Photography Workshop magazine and are online here.

Perhaps Dali’s “Cathedral of Thumbs” from 1947 was a positive review for La Couronne in Rouen, reputedly France’s oldest inn with a history going back to 1345. Its chefs have fed kings and queens, heads of state, Sophia Loren, John Wayne, Princess Grace, Maurice Chevalier, Jean-Paul Sartre and, anytime he was heading to Le Havre to set sail for America, Salvador Dali. He usually had the Canard a la Rouennaise and, like most of the VIP guests, scrawled his compliments on the wall.

Tantalising at right, “Still Life with Fish” from 1927. Famed TV cook Julia Child got her first taste of proper French food here in 1948, en route from Le Havre to Paris, and wrote just before she died in 2004 that it was “the most exciting meal of my life”.